TODAY’S HISTORY LESSON: Aug 4
1265 King Henry III puts down a revolt of English barons lead by Simon de Montfort.
1558 1st printing of Zohar (Jewish Kabbalah)
1578 A crusade against the Moors of Morocco is routed at the Battle of Alcazar-el-Kebir. King Sebastian of Portugal and 8,000 of his soldiers are killed.
1693 Dom Perignon invents champagne
1735 Printer John Peter Zenger, defended by Andrew Hamilton, was acquitted of libel in a case that helped foster freedom of the press.
1790 The Revenue Cutter service, the parent service of the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard, is organized.
1821 Russian Antarctic Expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen returns to Kronshtadt after becoming the 1st to circumnavigate Antarctica
1892 Lizzie Borden’s father and stepmother were killed with an axe in Fall River, Mass.
1914 Germany invades Belgium causing Great Britain to declare war on Germany.
1916 Denmark ceded the Danish West Indies, including the Danish Virgin Islands, to the United States for $25 million.
1925 US marines leave Nicaragua after 13-year occupation
1927 Peace Bridge between US & Canada opened
1942 The British government charges that Mohandas Gandhi and his All-Indian Congress Party favor “appeasement” with Japan.
1942 1st train with Jews departs Mechelen Belgium to Auschwitz
1944 RAF pilot T. D. Dean becomes the first pilot to destroy a V-1 buzz bomb when he tips the pilotless craft’s wing, sending it off course.
1944 Nazi police raided a house in Amsterdam and arrested eight people. Anne Frank, a teenager at the time, was one of the people arrested. Her diary would be published after her death.
1964 The bodies of civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman & James E. Chaney, are discovered in an earthen Mississippi dam.
1972 Arthur Bremer is sentenced to 63 years for shooting Alabama governor George Wallace, later reduced to 53 years.
1974 Crawford-Butler Act allows Puerto Ricans to elect own governor
1979 President Jimmy Carter establishes the Department of Energy
1983 New York Yankee outfielder Dave Winfield threw a baseball during warm-ups and accidentally killed a seagull. After the game, Toronto police arrested him for “causing unnecessary suffering to an animal.”
1986 The United States Football League called off its 1986 season. This was after winning only token damages in its antitrust lawsuit against the National Football League.
1987 The Fairness Doctrine was rescinded by the Federal Communications Commission. The doctrine had required that radio and TV stations present controversial issues in a balanced fashion.
1988 The US Senate votes to give each Japanese-American who was interned during WWII $20,000 compensation and an apology.
1994 Yugoslavia withdrew its support for Bosnian Serbs. The border between Yugoslavia and Serb-held Bosnia was sealed.
1997 Teamsters began a 15-day strike against UPS (United Parcel Service). The strikers eventually won an increase in full-time positions and defeated a proposed reorganization of the company’s pension plan.
2007 NASA’s Phoenix spacecraft was launched on a space exploration mission of Mars. The Phoenix lander descended on Mars on May 25, 2008.
2009 North Korean leader Kim Jong-il pardoned two American journalists, who had been arrested and imprisoned for illegal entry earlier in the year.
REFERENCE: HISTORY.NET, ONTHISDAY.COM, TIMEANDDATE.COM, INFOPLEASE.COM, FACTMONSTER.COM, SCOPESYS.COM, ON-THIS-DAY.COM, THEPEOPLEHISTORY.COM
